PhD student Daniel Nielsen successfully defends dissertation on the political economy of digital games
PhD student Daniel Nielsen successfully defends dissertation on the political economy of digital games
PhD student at the Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism, Daniel Nielsen, successfully defended his PhD dissertation on March 9, 2026. The title of his dissertation is “Value Extraction of Digital Gameplay: Locating Exchange Relations and Labor Hierarchies in Game Cultures”.
The thesis investigates the broad question of how economic pressures and the platform logic of digital games turn leisure into productive activities for players. Compared to social media and platform studies, much of the existing research in game studies overlooks the digital labor debate.
Drawing on a combination of interview and ethnographic data, as well as larger web-scraped data sets, he uncovers how labor is intrinsically embedded in play and game culture, embodying the tendencies toward assetization and financialization. This is significant for game studies and players as it highlights the subtle ways leisure activities are turned into modes of production and accumulation.
The findings advance the scholarly debate beyond the research on exploitative monetization practices or problematic labor conditions on the side of production. The presented case studies include paid-for player services in World of Warcraft, the adoption of cryptocurrency technology to attach value to playtime in No Man’s Sky, and the rental system in Axie Infinity where players lease non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and take a cut of other players’ accumulated cryptocurrencies, and lastly, the platform labor of Roblox creators that reuse pre-made assets turning the platform into a hub of derivative media. While these cases are diverse, they offer valuable insights into how big corporations approach games as platforms that drive forward labor, fictive value, and speculation, effectively turning virtual economies into mechanisms for sustained engagement.
Congratulations to Daniel Nielsen on this achievement, and best wishes for his future research and career.
